saas marketing strategy - free trial success secret 2: get your product to sell itself
Post on 18-May-2015
1.168 Views
Preview:
DESCRIPTION
TRANSCRIPT
The 7 Secrets toFree Trial Success
Turn your ‘Free Trial’ into a Customer-Creating Machine!
Lincoln Murphy Presents...
http://sixteenventures.comLincoln Murphy
7 Secrets to Increasing Conversions with Free Trials
Secret #2: Get Your Product
to Sell Itself
Lincoln Murphy
7 Secrets to Increasing Conversions with Free Trials
When someone signs-up for your Free Trial, and the product doesn’t sell itself, how do you expect to make a sale?
Lincoln MurphySecret #2: Get Your Product to Sell Itself
7 Secrets to Increasing Conversions with Free Trials
When we see Free Trial conversion rates of < 10% - even for ‘great’ products - it should be very clear that the product won’t sell itself, right?
Lincoln MurphySecret #2: Get Your Product to Sell Itself
7 Secrets to Increasing Conversions with Free Trials
When your sales process fails to convert customers, it’s probably doing exactly what it was designed to do.
Lincoln MurphySecret #2: Get Your Product to Sell Itself
7 Secrets to Increasing Conversions with Free Trials
The reality is simple; your product won’t sell itself...
Lincoln MurphySecret #2: Get Your Product to Sell Itself
7 Secrets to Increasing Conversions with Free Trials
Unless it is DESIGNED to sell itself.
Lincoln MurphySecret #2: Get Your Product to Sell Itself
7 Secrets to Increasing Conversions with Free Trials
Yes, some people will buy based on features even if you have a difficult-to-use product and cannot articulate the value proposition... it’s true.
Lincoln MurphySecret #2: Get Your Product to Sell Itself
7 Secrets to Increasing Conversions with Free Trials
But those people are early adopters and likely don't make up the majority of your market and your opportunity
Lincoln MurphySecret #2: Get Your Product to Sell Itself
7 Secrets to Increasing Conversions with Free Trials
Getting beyond those Early Adopters and to a wider audience (even in vertical / niche markets) should be the goal.
Lincoln MurphySecret #2: Get Your Product to Sell Itself
7 Secrets to Increasing Conversions with Free Trials
But that doesn’t happen by accident
Lincoln MurphySecret #2: Get Your Product to Sell Itself
7 Secrets to Increasing Conversions with Free Trials
The products that seem to ‘sell themselves’ aren’t magic, they are designed to ‘sell themselves’ as part of a highly-scalable customer acquisition process
Lincoln MurphySecret #2: Get Your Product to Sell Itself
7 Secrets to Increasing Conversions with Free Trials
Whether you have a low-touch, e-commerce, self-service sales process or have a team of sales people, designing your product to ‘sell itself’ will add much-needed scalability to your customer acquisition process
Lincoln MurphySecret #2: Get Your Product to Sell Itself
7 Secrets to Increasing Conversions with Free Trials
When you get into the right mindset around Free Trials you'll realize how most vendors do this wrong
Lincoln MurphySecret #2: Get Your Product to Sell Itself
7 Secrets to Increasing Conversions with Free Trials
And probably how you’re doing it wrong!
Lincoln MurphySecret #2: Get Your Product to Sell Itself
7 Secrets to Increasing Conversions with Free Trials
So how do you design a product to sell itself?
Lincoln MurphySecret #2: Get Your Product to Sell Itself
7 Secrets to Increasing Conversions with Free Trials
For most SaaS & Web App vendors, it starts with the Free Trial!
Lincoln MurphySecret #2: Get Your Product to Sell Itself
7 Secrets to Increasing Conversions with Free Trials
For most SaaS & Web App vendors, the Free Trial is a black hole...
Lincoln MurphySecret #2: Get Your Product to Sell Itself
7 Secrets to Increasing Conversions with Free Trials
A black hole where they send potential customers to die (not literally, I hope)...
Lincoln MurphySecret #2: Get Your Product to Sell Itself
7 Secrets to Increasing Conversions with Free Trials
Here’s a typical scenario I run into...
Lincoln MurphySecret #2: Get Your Product to Sell Itself
7 Secrets to Increasing Conversions with Free Trials
A vendor has a great marketing website with a good amount of traffic (very often paid traffic)
Lincoln MurphySecret #2: Get Your Product to Sell Itself
7 Secrets to Increasing Conversions with Free Trials
Through on-site optimization they get a good amount of people to sign-up for the trial every month...
Lincoln MurphySecret #2: Get Your Product to Sell Itself
7 Secrets to Increasing Conversions with Free Trials
And once the potential customers sign-up for the Free Trial, most of them leave after logging in only one time, never to be heard from again!
Lincoln MurphySecret #2: Get Your Product to Sell Itself
7 Secrets to Increasing Conversions with Free Trials
Very few ever come back for a second look, let alone sign-up as customers!
Lincoln MurphySecret #2: Get Your Product to Sell Itself
7 Secrets to Increasing Conversions with Free Trials
So what happened?
Lincoln MurphySecret #2: Get Your Product to Sell Itself
7 Secrets to Increasing Conversions with Free Trials
The vendor didn’t look at Free Trials the right way!
Lincoln MurphySecret #2: Get Your Product to Sell Itself
7 Secrets to Increasing Conversions with Free Trials
They thought the product would sell itself to people who were interested in simply poking around and kicking the tires.
Lincoln MurphySecret #2: Get Your Product to Sell Itself
7 Secrets to Increasing Conversions with Free Trials
I like this real estate analogy... which agent is going to sell a house faster and at a higher price?
Lincoln MurphySecret #2: Get Your Product to Sell Itself
7 Secrets to Increasing Conversions with Free Trials
The agent who gets a bunch of people to the front door, opens the door to let them into an empty house to look around on their own while they read the newspaper, allowing people to come and go as they please? Or...
Lincoln MurphySecret #2: Get Your Product to Sell Itself
7 Secrets to Increasing Conversions with Free Trials
The agent that greets them at the door, tells them what they’re going to see when they enter and guides them through the professionally staged home in a specific path, and gets them so emotionally invested in the home, neighborhood, school system, their kids’ future, their grandkids’ future, that they are ready to make an offer right then?
Lincoln MurphySecret #2: Get Your Product to Sell Itself
7 Secrets to Increasing Conversions with Free Trials
I’m going to go with the second agent.
Lincoln MurphySecret #2: Get Your Product to Sell Itself
7 Secrets to Increasing Conversions with Free Trials
The house is the same… the underlying product is the same.It is how it is presented and how you engage and pull in the user through the experience; how well you get them invested.
Lincoln MurphySecret #2: Get Your Product to Sell Itself
7 Secrets to Increasing Conversions with Free Trials
You can’t let someone come into your app and not know EXACTLY what to do to get started!
Lincoln MurphySecret #2: Get Your Product to Sell Itself
7 Secrets to Increasing Conversions with Free Trials
This is where most SaaS & Web App vendors completely drop the ball and why their Free Trial conversion rates are so low... the product isn’t designed to sell itself and yet that’s what they’re banking on!
Lincoln MurphySecret #2: Get Your Product to Sell Itself
For the Ultimate Free Trial Resource Guide, visit:
http://sixteenventures.com/free-trial-resource-guide
top related